Armor
by static-disturbed
Summary: "At the CDC Jenner had shown them how the synapses in the brains of the infected burnt out and died, taking with them all the memories and feelings someone had ever known. For Daryl, everything was happening like one of Jenner's videos of his dead wife playing in reverse. Things were glowing to life in him that he never knew existed. " BETHYL One shot series, post Still
1. Chapter 1

AN: One of what will become a compilation of Bethyl ficlets and one-shots. Probably won't be posted in chronological order and will eventually go off canon. Don't hate me for my Carol description, I think I did her some justice there. I've always just felt they were both too dark together, that they both needed a light in their life as far as for a romantic pairing.

* * *

They run for almost an hour. Their bodies are weak, malnourished and the moonshine sloshes around inside their empty bellies but each movement is propelled by pure adrenaline. He picks a spot because eventually they all seem as good as the next, and they collapse into the brush. Their chests heave but they both chuckle, breathing up at the stars in some kind of after-glow and endorphin overdose. Daryl can smell burning flesh and it's another odd effect of their world that it gives him comfort, because he knows every walker within a moderate distance has made their way to the flames like mosquitos to a bug zapper and staggered into them.

"Ain't nothin' quite like the stars in Georgia," he tells the sky that's twinkling like an aluminum Christmas tree, but knows she's listening beside him.

"Thought you said there wasn't anything left worth seein'," she teases, their shoulders brushing.

"Maybe a couple things ain't so bad," he whispers back before he can even think to stop himself, can hear something alter just so slightly in her breathing. They lay like that for a while and like has been happening a lot lately, Daryl has trouble keeping track of time. It could be ten minutes have passed, maybe three hours. Every time he lets his eyes blink closed he can see the way her blue orbs had danced, the way she'd smiled with every single tooth, " _we should burn it down."_ Just a little bit of a hellion dressed up like the farmer's daughter.

Beth's still beside him, eyes closed, chest rising and falling.

"Hey," he murmurs, testing to see if she's still awake. After a beat, she rolls onto her side, closing what distance was left between them.

"Hey," she whispers back, offering a small, closed lip smile. He can feel her breath on his cheek. "You ok?"

She's the only one ever asking if he's ok, about things other than surface injuries.

At first he grunts, something like a yes in the back of his throat. She keeps watching him, her lithe body twisted at the torso to look at him. That dirty yellow polo is stretched across the expanse of her chest, rising up just a few inches to reveal a slither of skin like snow above the waistband of her jeans. The stars offer just the slightest glow that reflects on her cheekbones, so much more prominent with their new diet of berries and squirrels.

"Daryl," she sighs his name, kind of impatient and pushy, prodding him to say whatever it is that's sitting on his tongue. He wants badly to hate how she seems to know him, how she fits under his skin without any irritation. He doesn't though, not at all.

"Felt like my old man back there," he tells her, crosses his arms under his head, "all fired up on moonshine in a little shack like that, yellin' at ya like that. S'how it always was in my house, between my parents, then between me and the old man. I mean it was worse, a lot worse. Still feels shitty."

She said she would remind him, who he is and who he isn't anymore. He needs to add who he could have become but didn't. Maybe the world ended to stop him from becoming his father. He's never been selfish enough to be able to believe anything like that, but if that's what it took then maybe he can live with the world on pause. Maybe it's why he survived.

"I can take it," she dismisses, unhurt and unscathed. At first glance she seems so fragile, like wet paper, ready to disintegrate at the first hint of pressure. Except she's not at all, so far from it. He's lashed out at other women before, Carol, Lori. They always backed away just so slightly, a little wounded, maybe a little afraid. All those times made him retreat into himself with guilt, although he rarely showed it, feeling Will Dixon's voice spit out of his mouth. Beth had stood her ground, hadn't conceded to his tantrum one bit, had even pushed back. He wasn't sure if it was worse or better that she hadn't feared him. "You had something to get out."

His ma had said that once, when he'd climbed onto the bare mattress with her, pushed the brittle bleached blonde hair away from her face and touched her blackened eyes. He was little, probably just a toddler but it's one of those memories that wallpaper the lining of his brain. She'd lit a Virginia Slim with trembling hands, after he fetched the pack for her and sipped Irish whiskey from a high ball that was always on the bedside table. " _I can take it, don't worry baby."_

"Shouldn't ever have to take it," he shakes his head, "you're too good for that. Never gonna happen again. Ok?"

He looks over at her, her face just inches from his, resting on her forearm. Hesitantly she moves the arm not folded under her head and places her hand on his chest. She watches his face, reading his reaction and he's never been good at poker because she keeps it there. A heat rushes through his body, something he hasn't felt in ages, maybe ever if he's being honest. Not like this. Carol's tried before, nestling against his body in the middle of the night, trying to let her hands wander places they weren't invited. There were times he yelled at her, stormed off to find a new resting place because it felt like she was trying to take something he wasn't willing to give. Other times he'd removed her hand gently, when she was weak and weeping and they were both torn in half over her little girl. He'd always moved away though, always. He didn't want it, thought she thought it was the only way she could show him she appreciates him, because her husband crushed whatever sense of worth with men she might have had once. They were cut from the same thread of an angry man's fists and even though it wasn't her fault, letting her dark into his would've gotten them both lost. Carol's probably dead though and it hurts his chest because he did love her, not in the way she wanted in the middle of the night maybe, but she saw him before anyone else did.

Beth's got long dainty fingers; dirty, bitten fingernails like his though. He can feel the heat of her palm through his shirt and wishes it was against his skin instead. He can't remember ever thinking that about anyone, ever wanting to invite someone under his armor. He'd never take it off, but maybe she could come in, let it protect them both.

"We're not them," she promises, "you're not him. You never will be."

"Ok," he agrees and it's a hell of a thing that when she says it, he believes her. Daryl wonders if she can tell how much she terrifies him, if she could read the signs that flashed 'liar' when he growled that he wasn't scared of anything. She lets her arm fall back to her side, not without letting her fingers ghost down his side, lingering. "Get some sleep," he tells her, swallowing a lump of nerves rising in the back of his throat, "We're moving on soon as the suns up."

She blinks up at him, those long lashes leaving shadows on her cheeks and smiles.

"Ok."

He doesn't even pretend not to watch her as she drifts to sleep and then all the way through until the sun comes up. Her lips open and part, sometimes she jumps in her sleep, murmurs and yells. She says his name though, once, kind of quiet and lazy and her lip quirks almost into a smile. It must be hours, but it feels like seconds.


	2. Heaven

AN: Chapter 2 in the Armor Collection.

* * *

 **Heaven**

One evening, they let the undead heard them like sheep to a hilltop. There aren't many, six tops, which is child's play compared to what they've faced before. Except Beth's got a bum ankle and there's no ammo left in the handgun she took off the animated corpse of what had once been a wildlife ranger. She's gotten good with the knife, maybe even great although he doesn't tell her that out loud, but Daryl's down to three arrows and they haven't had a proper meal since two breakfasts ago. The incline isn't very high, but it's steep enough that the walkers keep sliding down it onto each other like they're under an unseen avalanche. So, they decide to take a moment, sit, breathe. Beth makes a comment under her breath, something about how the hill would have been perfect for sledding and then scoffs at herself, remembering where they are. Daryl knows that she assumes he finds those kinds of comments immature but the truth is he loves getting lost in her little scenarios, just for a second. He likes picturing Beth all bundled up, careening down a hill on a steel trashcan lid.

The walkers continue their assault on the hill and continue to turn in at the knees and then topple onto one another, no balance in the afterlife apparently.

"What was it like?", she inquires suddenly, not looking at him but into the eyes of what had once been a woman with a bob of brunette hair, "when you had to end it for Merle?"

He's not offended, because even he can see Maggie in what's left of the face of the walker who keeps sliding back down the hill on her knees. So, he explains it the best he can, which probably isn't very well at all. About how part of him felt guilty, part of him knew he was doing what his brother would want. He leaves out the part about how something deep down inside him had hummed with just the slightest amount of pride. Merle liked to talk about an imaginary world where he'd raised Daryl, kept him safe, was strong for both of them. It was all bullshit because Daryl was the one to live, he was the one still there and it hadn't been from any help of Merle's.

"I wish I was that strong," Beth sighs quietly beside him when he's finished. Her long, pale fingers that turn blue sometimes at night when the temperature drops like it has been lately, using the sharp end of a broken twig to scrape brain matter from the serrated edge of the hunting knife she always wears strapped to her belt. Her hair is escaping from the braid she pulled it into that morning, curling around her ears. There's a smear of dry blood on her chin, aftermath of her mouth slamming against the shoulder of a walker after it fell back into her with her knife in its skull. He doesn't fuss over the injury, she'll only insist she's fine. She is fine, Beth doesn't fret over much including the ankle she's been dragging for two days. The fussing would be for his own benefit, because something inside him wants an excuse to hold her chin and splash water over her lips.

"You would be, if ya were in the position," he assures with a shrug. She shakes her head, hands stilling on the knife and falling limp over her knees. Her usually impeccable posture wilts. Elbows slumped on her thighs, she turns to him.

"I had a brother too Daryl," she reminds him, suddenly sounding like her throat is closing up, "I was in that position, my whole family was. I wish we'd been strong enough to just let him go, stead' of lettin' him bump into walls in that barn, for months, _rotting."_

Shawn. He remembers the name from their conversation at the shack and from Beth and Maggie's guttural cries the day Shane had let the walkers out of her father's barn. Her mother had been in there too, their neighbors and friends. Sophia had been in that barn. There had been some times he had agreed with Shane, even when the other man's mental stability had begun to splinter. He'd been the first one to accept a gun, take his place in the firing squad. By time the last of the dead had fallen for good, Daryl had quietly shifted all his loyalties to Rick. For all their gun toting bravado, it had been left to Rick to do the heavy lifting and put Sophia down. He was glad he couldn't remember if it was his bullet that had brought Shawn, or her mother, or any of the other people the Greene's had still considered their family, to their backs. They'd gone about things so wrong that day.

"Ya'll didn't know," he dismisses as kindly as he can, fumbling with his fourth arrow that is broken in two pieces, "can't blame yer old man for wantin' to hope."

"We knew," she interrupts, her baby blue eyes darkening like an afternoon storm rolling in. He has a feeling she's tired of excuses being made for her and hers, tired of the naive, secluded country folk label everyone had thrown on them. "Maybe we didn't say it out loud, and maybe we all pretended to believe daddy when he said a cure would come, but we knew. And we left them out there, let them stay like that, just didn't want to deal with it."

One of the walkers at the bottom of the hill seems to get some leverage suddenly, makes it two or three paces further than any have yet and he almost has her up by the elbow ready to run. Then it falls straight backwards, almost comically into the worst trust fall ever because the rest of the dead don't even register the added weight as it flattens the lot of them like dominoes.

He thinks about making the trust fall joke because it seems like something she might find funny and her whole face lights up when he makes a joke, even if it's a shitty one. Except she's cleaning the knife again, this time scowling. She freezes, turns to him and he never knows what he's supposed to do when she looks like this.

"What If…what if they couldn't…couldn't move on until…" she sounds disgusted and angry and trails off.

The sun's starting to dip lower in the sky and the chill is just settling around his shoulders. After a long moment of contemplation, which is just him giving her a minute to get her emotions under control, he looks back to her, searching for an explanation to her previous statement.

"You mean like heaven?" he clarifies. Her lips are tightly pursed together, her jawline stiff.

"I guess it sounds dumb," she muses, maybe a hint of something defensive in her tone, "but I guess that's what I mean."

She finally stops picking at the knife and sheaths it, cracking her knuckles and looking anywhere but at him.

"Not dumb. Faith's not an easy thing to shake," he reasons, "not that you oughta' shake it." She looks pleasantly surprised and he reminds her, "Ya ain't the only one born and raised in the Bible belt."

He knows she'd expect him to laugh off her ponderings about heaven and God. Daryl isn't sure what he believes, but he knows that the way people like him and Beth grew up it was engrained in them to be heaven seeking and hell fearing. Even his daddy used to lament about sinning as he took a leather strap to his children's backs.

She's looking around, at the sky and tree line and now anywhere but below them.

"You know with some of the things we've been through I've thought that there's no way there could be a God. Just figured this is it, human extinction and we all might as well stop fighting it and give in."

He remembers, back on the farm, when she'd taken a glass shard to her wrist. She still wears the scar, pink and raised below a gathering of leather bracelets. He's only recently noticed it when she took them off to wash her arms in a creek bed. Back then he'd dismissed everyone else's whispered worry, because what did they care about some stupid girl they didn't even know. He hadn't meant it of course, never meant most of the hardened words he's thrown around. He'd noticed the slight blonde around the farm and back then it hadn't been her smile to draw his attention. She'd been a bit of a ghost, lost behind the eyes and lurking in Maggie's shadow. She came alive to him that winter on the road, before the prison. Singing by the fire, her voice warmer than the flames for their cold bones.

Finally, she matches his gaze and he has to look away, too afraid to play the tennis game of stares. He remembers the horrified look on Dale's face right before he put him down. And Sophia, lost alone in those woods that could even scare him these days. He remembers their prison gates, the first real home he's ever had in his entire life, falling in around them.

Then she laughs, a small one and it isn't at all sarcastic, more like wondrous and a bit confused

"And then some other thing happens… and I think, how can there not be? How could those things have come to be without some higher something playing a part? How can we not fight for this world?"

Rick waking up from a damn coma and somehow finding his wife and son miles and miles from where he'd last left them. Judith's entire existence. Glenn and Maggie's love. Michonne wandering up to their gates, unscathed by the walkers surrounding her. The fact alone that the two of them are still around to ponder the existence of a higher being at all.

Those blue saucers bare into him. He knows she isn't really asking him, isn't expecting an affirmation or dismissal of her faith. She's just talking, because she trusts him. Same way he'd just rehashed his encounter with Merle's corpse to her, for the first time to anyone. Because he trusts her.

"We could try to get some rest up here," he suggests simply, "don't seem like they're very good at climbing hills. Soon enough squirrel or something will come along and they'll wander off."

"Ok. You're not keeping watch alone though, we'll both stay up. Just let our bodies rest," she folds her long legs under her and situates herself against her thin pack, watching him with a half grin and half something else.

And God Damnit he wants to tell her that heaven has to be real, right there at the top of that hill with the dead trying to claw their way into it.


	3. Tuesday

**Tuesday**

They almost die on a Tuesday. At least, they think it's a Tuesday because Beth didn't start keeping track of the days until they'd been out there for at least a few, so they had to guess and estimate a little bit. He's not sure what time really means anymore, recalls scoffing at Dale, winding his watch every day as if they were counting down to anything. It's important to Beth though, so Daryl's started trying to keep track again.

There's still no ammo in Beth's gun but they both agree she should continue to wear it out in the open, because it's vital not to look weak should they run into anyone out here. So, on Tuesday, probably Tuesday, they stumble upon a dirt road and decided to follow it, because desperation and hunger mean they don't really get to be picky anymore. " _This is gonna be it, I'm tellin' ya, we're gonna find something,"_ she insists an hour into the trek, wearing that impossible smile again. When the dirt road turns into asphalt and signs start to appear advertising a strip mall, she nudges his elbow, _"told ya."_ Daryl isn't sure how she does that, seems to make things happen just by being confident enough, but he can't question the process.

Most of the stores in the seven-shop plaza appear oddly untouched, as if business hours are just over for the day and all the closed signs will be flipped to open come tomorrow. The lot is dotted with a few cars left in a permanent state of park. There's a gray F-250 in the last spot, boxy and beat just like his used to be and even though everyone is always going off, were always going off, about him and his motorcycle he had loved that truck. He wonders if it's still out there, idle on the highway where he'd left it with the keys on the front seat after the CDC or if some needy soul had come along and put it to good use. He hopes someone did, truck like that deserved to driven.

They approach quiet and cautious and speaking in a series of hand signals that Beth has picked up on quickly, just like she's picked up on everything else. This was easier with more people, with Glenn and Maggie operating like the well-oiled run machine they had become. Beth moves like her sister though, calculated and hyper aware and he wonders if Hershel had known he'd raised girls who could become soldiers so easily. This was easier when they had guns with ammo and a vehicle and home base to escape in and to when shit went south. These kinds of runs aren't about building up supplies, they're about getting enough food in their stomach to last another day. They are scavenging. From a distance, they'd agreed the thrift store with the poster board sign boasting 'Camping Supplies' was the first place to hit so Daryl raps on the window while Beth hangs back by the front door. They wait a long minute and after no movement or noise from inside he gestures for her to try the door. It's locked, which he takes as a good sign because more than likely the owners locked everything up tight and took off before anyone could die inside. Breaking the glass is a risky move because who knows what the sound can draw but Beth could gather water in the hallows of her collar bones from not eating so he breaks it anyway.

The shelves are still stocked, lined with odds and ends marked with hand written orange price tags.

"Kind of place my old man did all his shopping," he recalls, not that it had been often. He'd shown up to school on the first day of 8th grade and a boy in his class had recognized his patched jeans and half beaten sneakers as his old things that his mother had donated to the second-hand store. The kid had taunted him all day and Daryl can remember the specific feeling of the first time he'd knocked someone's teeth out.

"Me and Mama used to go thrifting and flea marketing' on Saturday's," Beth counters, picking up some kind of ceramic Knick knack that's gathered enough dust to coat her fingertips, "Maggie too when she was home from school. Daddy used to joke that people got rid of their clutter just so it could become our clutter."

She's been talking about Maggie a lot in the last few days as they've wandered, sharing stories and pondering about what her and Glenn's children would have looked like. He doesn't like to talk about it or think about it. He wishes he could forget they ever existed in some ways, because that would be easier than how much it hurts to picture them dead. Beth speaks about them like she has to though, maybe because if she focuses on memories and what ifs she can keep them alive in her mind instead of what they most likely are. She probably picks up on the way he barely grunts when she asks him questions during those kinds of conversations but she talks about it anyway and he can't really blame her. Maggie was her sister and she deserves to deal with it however she can. Whatever keeps her steady keeps her alive so he doesn't argue it.

"Clothes," Daryl points and she follows his fingertip to the back of the store where several circular racks hold mismatched second hand apparel. "I'm gonna check the back, under the counters for food or guns."

She nods, moves towards the back and he hops the counter to look around. The register is the old kind, no computer screen, the counter littered with pens and receipt books. There's a photo pinned to a bulletin board of a woman in probably her 70's and what he guesses is her husband, each holding a small white dog to their chest.

"Alright grandma and granpa," he grumbles, "where'd you hide the guns?"

There's a shelf under the counter full of useless shit. He pockets a swiss army knife and a stack of receipts for burning. There's a box though, the top folded over with 'Food pantry donations February' written across it in marker. He's about to shout to Beth, holding a can of baked beans in each hand when he looks up and finds her beaming back at him. She's changed her shirt, out of the yellow polo and into a white long sleeve thermal with a khaki colored Carhart jacket over top. She's got a black beanie on her head, the kind with a furry pom pom on top and she holds out a thick, Sherpa lined flannel to him.

"These will be good for the cold nights," she says and then her eyes lay on the beans and he can practically see her salivate.

"Ain't ever been able to turn down a good can of beans and franks," he shrugs and tosses her one and then the swiss army knife, "eat now, you need it. Then we can check out the other places."

"I told you Daryl," she insists holding the can against her chest like gold, like the people in the photo hold their little dogs, "told you we were gonna find something good."

Good is a relative term considering all they've got is two cans of beans and a couple jackets, but it's more than they had ten minutes ago so he can't argue. They won't be cold tonight and their stomachs won't be empty. And something about her in that hat, the way her eyes are smiling under the too big folded band, is doing something to him inside. He'd never been the kind of guy to use, to even think, words like adorable. But she looks pretty fucking adorable, not that Daryl would ever have the balls to tell her so.

Instead he tucks the other can and the flannel into his backpack and gnaws at what's left of his fingernails, watching her make quick work of opening the beans.

"Anything else back there?" she inquires, shoving a scoop into her mouth with three fingers and then blushing a little when she notices him watching, "sorry."

"Is there another way to eat than with your fingers?" he jokes because she never fails to watch him with a raised eyebrow when he eats, shoveling everything in with his hands and making him self-conscious of his manners for the first time in his entire life. "Nah, no guns. Guess these old bastards took them with them when they skipped town."

She's about to scold him for calling the people in the photo bastards and that's half why he said it, because maybe he gets a small thrill out of her berating him, except then the front door goes tumbling open. The walkers are squeezing through the threshold like they're getting out of a clown car, one after the other pouring in and descending on them in seconds. He hops the counter just as Beth drops the can, both scrambling for their knives and breaking into a sprint towards the rear of the store. He stops to knock shelves over behind him, trying to slow them down but there's at least a dozen undead baring down on them by the time they're all in the door. There's no time to stop to shoot arrows and he doesn't have nearly enough to make a dent.

Beth's trying a steel door that they both assume led to the storeroom and maybe out into a back alley but she pounds it an anger.

"Daryl it's locked!"

The walkers are tripped up on the tipped shelves but slowly making their way over the mess, jaws chomping at the air. Beth's got her back pressed against the locked door, looking at him with her big blue eyes twice their size and pupils dilated in fear. They can both fight, but this many, this fast in such a contained space seems impossible. He grabs one of the last standing shelves and pulls it in front of them, making a temporary blockade.

"What do we do?" she gasps as a rotten hand reaches through the shelf and grabs at them. They both push forward, controlling the shelves to keep the hands from reaching them.

"Gotta push our way out, push and push till we can't any more, then just run. Duck low and run. Don't look back, not even for me."

"I won't leave you," she insists, shaking her head frantically, both leaning forward on one knee to brace for a big push, "we're both getting' out."

It's unlikely and he's going to be certain if it's only one of them that makes it, it's her. After a count down of head nods they shove, barreling forward like football players pushing a blocking sled. Except it's a shelf and there are dead people on the other side. And when they're half way to the middle it becomes too hard to push and he gives her the signal, mouths run and they both duck to their knees and break into a squatted sprint. Only Darryl runs into them instead of away from, tackling at the torso and trying to take as many to the ground as he can on his way out to slow them down. He's lost sight of Beth, has no idea if she's beside him, behind him or already out. He turns back, has to double check and a rotten hand closes around his wrist. He punches the thing but It doesn't lose its grip and then a second one clasps around his ankles and pulls him to the floor. He can't see Beth anywhere though and it's the small solace he takes as he watches the black teeth of the second walker descend on his leg.

The ceramic vase connects with the things face just in time to give him a second to boot it fully away and shake from the other one's grip. He scurries up, follows Beth tail out the front door and they kick up dirt as they dash back down the street, pounding the pavement. They run until they're back on the dirt road and there are no groans behind them, slowing steadily until she skids to the ground, bracing herself on her hands and breathing heavily.

"I told you to run, not look back," he growls. She's on her hands and knees in the dirt and looks up at him with a disbelieving frown.

"And I said I wouldn't leave you."

She lost her hat in the run. She sits back on her knees and points accusingly at him.

"And what was that? You ran into them stead' of away, that wasn't the plan."

"I was buyin' you time," he corrects, resting his hands on the back of his head while he catches his breath, "Shouldn'ta come back, what good are we both dead?"

"About as good as I'd be alive alone," she bites back, climbing to her feet, brushing dirt from her knees angrily and adjusting her thin backpack on her shoulders. He's so glad they never removed their packs, still have what little they did coming into this. Beth's blue eyes are cold, her forehead wrinkled up.

"Ain't true, you know how to survive, could do it without me," Daryl reminds her because it's true. She doesn't need him, not anymore. She can track, she can shoot, she has the instincts.

Beth looks at him like he's just said the stupidest thing she's ever heard though. He doesn't get it, how this girl can take him down ten notches with a glance.

"What would be the point? End up like Bob? Half-crazy from talkin' to myself?" she starts to walk as she says it, starting back down the road with her back to him.

"You'd be alive that's the point. It's always the point," he calls to her as he too starts walking, keeping a few steps behind her.

They walk in silence for a long time, Beth paces ahead of him. The road is lined with trees that have begun to change for the fall and earlier she'd commented on them, broke into long stories about autumn on the farm. Now she's so quiet he can practically hear her seething at him. Daryl can't remember ever seeing her angry, not like this, although from what he understands she'd fired a gun once to get his brother under control. They're nearing back where they started, the quiet patch of woods by the railroad tracks that they'd slept in the night before when she spins around on her heel and stops in the middle of the road.

"Just cause I could make it on my own," she tells him matter of factly, "doesn't mean I want to. We gotta be a team Daryl, we gotta make it together. You can't just jump at the first chance to sacrifice yourself for me."

"You ain't getting' it," he sighs, rubs a palm down his face. Her expression softens for the first time since they ran.

"Well make me get it."

"If it's gonna be one of us," he gestures back and forth between the two of them, "it's gotta be you who makes it. You can make it alone, I can't."

"You're wrong," she insists, genuinely confused, "you're the strongest person I know. Last man standing remember?"

"No, you're wrong," he corrects, eyes on the toes of his boots and then up to the sky, "I ain't no good at being on my own, not for real, no matter what I used to BS. If you weren't out here with me I woulda quit already."

Beth doesn't say anything, just watches him for a long time, her hands each holding a strap of her backpack. He can feel her gaze but he's too scared to meet it, mumbles something about how they oughta make camp and see If they can catch a squirrel. And then she's against him, arms around his waist and her face buried in his chest.

"I thought you were dead," she gulps, "thought I was gonna hafta…put you down. Couldn't of left you out there, I wouldn't leave anyone like that again."

"I'm alive," he whispers back, wraps his arms around her hesitantly and then almost laughs. She said they were both gonna survive and they did, he still doesn't know how she keeps doing that.

She doesn't answer, stays pressed against him and Daryl allows himself to pet her hair, just in the slightest.

"Lost your hat," he mumbles and can feel her smile against him.

"Not worried about the hat."

He pulls away gently, digs back into his backpack.

"At least we got these," he reveals the second can of beans, "since your first meal got interrupted."

She smiles at him, takes the can in her hand and tests the weight. She'll insist they split them, he already knows.

They construct a tiny fire with the last of the matchbook they've been using and the receipts he took. He sits on guard with his bow ready, watching the woods and listening for the slightest sound of trouble. Beth sits by the fire, the hood of her new jacket pulled around her ears, eating her share of the can of beans. They're both on edge, antsy with adrenaline from the close call. She watches him though, flashes a mischievous grin when he meets her eye.

"All things considering," she tells him, "it wasn't a bad day."

Daryl snorts, shakes his head, forgets the image haunting him of doing this without her.

"Hell, I've had worse Tuesdays."


	4. Shaman

**Shaman**

The dog was probably white once, a medium sized mutt with a gentle demeanor. He'd been well trained and well cared for at some point, based on the circus act of tricks he put on for Beth as she tested out commands. Now he's a dirty, matted mess with worn down paw pads who lost an eye somewhere along the line.

"What should we call him?" Beth asks from her spot on the other side of the fire. The dog is sitting patiently between her legs, barely flinching as she uses her hunting knife to try to cut some of the larger knots and patches of dried mud from its coat. She's talking to Daryl but everything is coming out in the gentle, child-like baby voice she's been whispering to the stray in.

"Shouldn't call him nothin'," he reminds because he's been against this since the mangy thing wandered into the alarms they have stringed around their camp, sending the hub caps and crushed cans knocking into one another and getting them both up and off their feet. It's their third night in the same spot and things have been calm but that's what makes him want to move on soon. Nothing stays this quiet for long, not anymore. And Daryl likes dogs as much as the next guy, hadn't been against tossing the thing some of the rabbit innards that Beth won't eat anyway. Dogs are loud though, loud and alive and dumb and all they need is one outburst of barking for the thing to bring a heard down on them.

Beth's been insistent though that they aren't leaving it on its own to be torn to shreds by walkers. The glare in those blue eyes was enough to make him concede after his fifth attempt to talk some sense into her. The fight died the second the thing heeled at Beth's boot toe and offered her it's paw.

"Someone loved him once. Least we can do is look out for him," she tells him across the fire, "Same as I hope someone might do if they ran into one of our family. Same as you used to do at the prison, when you found folks out on the road."

He doesn't bother trying to debate the difference because she's right. If they were back at the prison, if he'd been out on a run he would have been the first one loading the mutt up in the car to take home. He would've cleaned it up, snuck it into Carl's cell and waited just to catch a glimpse of the smiles that were such a rarity on the kids face.

Out here though they can barely keep their own bellies full and he knows Beth well enough to know that her ration of meals just got cut in half to be shared with their new friend. She's a force to be reckoned with though; so, he just watches her, maneuvering through the knots with gentle hands, stopping every few moments to rub the dog's head and whisper reassurances in his ear.

"Better watch ya don't catch fleas from your new cuddle buddy," he warns, licking what's left of their meager supper from his fingertips.

Beth purses her lips, raises an amused eyebrow at him.

"Don't be jealous."

"Ain't jealous of no fleabag," he retorts, hoping she can't see the blush he can feel burn across his face and even Daryl can hear that the scoff he releases sounds like he's trying too hard. He wants to smother himself just for a second because Beth giggles and even the dog looks at him like he's the most obvious man on Earth.

He's certainly not worried about the dog taking his place in the cocoon they've been making nightly, all intertwined arms and legs and Beth's face burrowed in the hallow of his throat. Even with their scavenged coats the temperature has been unforgiving at night. Body heat has been the most obvious natural resource they've got. He keeps reminding himself that it's just for warmth, that she only lets her hands play with the hair at the base of his neck sometimes because they're just trying to keep each other warm. Same excuse they'd both made when he found her blinking up at him in the middle of the night and his hand seemed to move its own, stroking the length of her chapped bottom lip with his thumb. It's just about staying warm.

Eventually, she sheaths her knife, smooths a hand over the new bald patches in the canine's fur.

"I'll take you to the creek tomorrow, try to wash this dirt out."

As if he's thanking her, the dog rolls over and shows her his belly. Beth laughs and scoops the thing up like an infant, scratching his underside with one hand and cradling his head with the other. The dog just lets her, licking his lips contently and Daryl wonders how long he's been on his own, how long he's been searching for whoever he belonged to once. She rocks it like she would have Judith, staring in it's one good eye and she starts to hum, barely audible under her breath.

She misses the baby most. He knows her heart aches to be with her sister again, longs for the family ties they'd built so strong at the prison. It's that baby though, their little ass kicker, that she lurches awake in the middle of the night searching for sometimes. She'll pat the grass beside her frantically, grasping for a basinet that isn't there. He never knows what to do, doesn't want to startle her all the way awake, so he hangs back. His heart breaks every time he watches her remember where she is, remember everything that's happened in a split second. She'll run a hand through her hair as the panic subsides and is replaced with something worse. When she goes back to sleep she doesn't cry, but curls in around herself and hums until she drifts off again. Judith didn't belong to Beth, but she's like a childless mother without her.

"He's prolly already got a name," he interrupts softly, "ain't gonna start answering to Toto if he's been Lassie all his life. Ya know?"

Beth seems to ponder over what he's said and then sighs a little, speaks to the mutt with a gentle smile.

"Well sometimes we've all got to learn to be someone new, that's how we survive."

The fire is dying, just a glow of ambers between them. Beth grins up at him when they both realize the tired dog has fallen asleep in her arms, snuggled into her side. Daryl can't help but to smile back and then pick himself up off the ground, bringing the worn sleeping bag they took from a massacred campsite with him. He shakes it out and spreads it beside her, placing his crossbow on the ground by his feet and patting his waist to check that the gun they also found at the campsite is still there.

In what has become a perfected routine, he lays back, his head propped up on a backpack and Beth lays beside him. She's still cradling the small dog as she curls into his side, swaddling it between them. He always takes first watch because if he doesn't Beth will let him sleep straight through the night, always insisting he needs more rest. So, he just holds her, wills his body to produce enough heat to keep her lips from turning purple tonight and watches her sleep. The first night she spooned into him he'd lay awake all night, blinking nervously at the sky, too afraid to touch her. Now he lets a hand rest in her hair easily, stroking at the skin above her eyebrow with two fingers.

"Shaman," he says into the dark and her eyes blink open beside him.

"Hmm?"

"Shaman, Native American…like the medicine man ya know?" he nods down at the dog, "It means healer."

Her little smile is grateful and knowing and laced with a 'told ya so'.

"Shaman," Beth whispers and one arm snakes across Daryl's midsection, pulling all three of them closer, "that's what we'll call you."


	5. Dream

AN: So this story might seem a little odd since it's a bit of a dream sequence but I actually really love it. I'm a big Merle Dixon fan in the weirdest way and I just felt like sometimes Daryl needs Merle's no frills advice. Obviously, we have Merle so the rating has been heightened for very impropriate language. I appreciate ever person following these stories and if you have any suggestions or prompts I would be willing to try to work them in if I can.

* * *

 **Dream**

When Beth lets him sleep, the way he always begs her not to, he dreams about his brother. Daryl knows he's dreaming because he's never been a deep sleeper and these meetings with Merle have become a regular occurrence. In the dream, Beth is asleep. He knows out in the conscious world she's wide awake, sitting cross legged in the middle of the room with his bow and her knife and Shaman by her feet, lapping his paws while he watches her watch the windows. Still, in the dream she's all curled up on the little sofa in the sitting room of the funeral parlor and Merle is lounging on the arm of it, looking down at her.

"She's cute little brother," he leers, "real spit fire too. Went all trigger happy to get me and your boy Korea off each other back at the prison."

"Stop," Daryl warns simply and he should have known this one was coming. Merle laughs, that laugh that never really sounds like anything is funny. Merle used to laugh for real, mostly at TV shows and movies but sometimes at things Daryl said when he was a kid and Merle was something like an adult. That had stopped though, died around the same time the crystal and the meth came alive in his veins.

"Oh come on princess, did you think I was gonna let you off easy here? Shame she's not quite as built as her sister, let me tell you that one had a real set..."

"Merle shut the fuck up," he screams. He always screams in the dreams in a way he'd never quite been able to in real life. Still, it doesn't matter if it's a dream and he knows it, because Maggie wasn't the kind of girl you said shit like that about, "that shits why nobody ever wanted you around."

"Hey now," Merle stands, starts to pace. He's dressed the way he was the day he died, cargo pants and that black button down, one knife on his belt and one where his hand had once been, "you know I did those ungrateful bastards a real favor."

Daryl sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose.

"They weren't ungrateful. Everybody got what ya did, ya died with their respect. Even Glenn."

"Even Glenn," Merle mocks in a sarcastic, squeaky voice and rolls his eyes, "whatever. Wasn't about them anyway."

Shaman is in the dream all the sudden, watching Merle with a curious eye and his brother kneels, pets the dogs head and smiles something almost like a real smile.

"Member when you got me that dog?" Daryl reminisces all the sudden because he's honestly forgotten until that very second. He and Merle had lived many lives together in many worlds and that one was the furthest away. His big brother coming home to the trailer Daryl and his dad had moved into after the fire, dressed to the nines in full uniform with a little ball of fur under his arm. "That little German Shepard puppy, brought it home when ya came back from bootcamp."

"Pissed all over my Chevelle on the drive back," dream Merle grimaces, "whatever happened to that thing?"

Daryl shrugs, bites a thumb nail.

"It shit on the carpet and the old man kicked it out, chased it away."

He'd got it too that day, lost a tooth long before it was wiggly and ready on its own. Daryl leaves that part out though.

"Son of a bitch," Merle sighs, scratching under Shaman's chin and they sit like that for a while, in silence, dream Beth snoring between them.

"So you just gonna pet her hair and heavy breathe like a creep forever or ya gonna make a move?"

"Ain't like that," he lies easily and Merle rolls his eyes, exaggerated and unimpressed.

"Says the guys with the worst case of blue balls since…oh wait since every other time you were too pussy to make a move on a girl."

"Man shut up," Daryl stands, strides around the room in annoyance, almost worries about waking Beth with his clumsy strides but then remembers he's the one actually asleep, "seriously you can go now, dream over."

"Oh, no little brother, I say when the dream ends," Merle grabs him by the elbow, "You're out there snoring away like sleeping beauty while Rapunzel keeps you safe so ya might as well listen to what old Merle has to say."

And then all the sudden they're in the kitchen, because these damn dreams never make any sense. They're at the table where he and Beth have eaten together for the last two days, across from the stove where she's cooked stew of the rabbits he caught and washed dishes like the world wasn't rotting outside the windows. Merle's sitting across from him, popping open the jar of pig feet he's already claimed for himself, mostly to make Beth wrinkle up her nose.

"If you're gonna talk about her," Daryl warns, "stop with all that rude shit. She ain't like that, she's not like the kind of girls you plowed thru. Her sister either, none of my people."

"Your people," Merle drags the words out slowly, drenched in sarcasm again, pops a pig's foot in his mouth.

"Yea, my people. Who are all dead cept' for Beth so have a little respect for once would ya?"

Merle raises one eyebrow, leans forward over the table and then unceremoniously slaps Daryl on the side of the head. It still hurts for being a dream.

"They ain't dead ya moron."

"How would you know? You weren't there, the prison went down in flames practically."

All the sudden the lights are on in the room and the foods gone from the table and Merle isn't wearing that black shirt he wore when he died anymore. Now he's got on his vest, the one Daryl knows is folded over the arm of the couch in the awake world. He looks at him with another annoyed expression. Merle's got two hands all the sudden, folded over one another on the table.

"Because I'm dead you dumbass. And they ain't. Not officer friendly or his weird kid or the baby. Not Korea, not your girls more blessed sister, none of em."

"Well where are they?" he presses because even if he knows this is a dream and even if he knows Merle would lie to a nun, the prospect still makes him sit forward in his seat.

"What do I look like a fucking GPS service?" Merle scoffs, "all I'm telling you is where they ain't, which would be here. Ya know, after life or whatever."

Daryl just sits back in his seat, chews at the fingernails he won't have much of left soon between his dreams and the walkers and Beth wanting to take a bath upstairs where she'd be naked and he'd be in the same house.

And then he nods, nudges towards the other room where the mirage of Beth has rolled over onto her back and her eyelids are fluttering with REM sleep.

"You think I should…think she'd…"

"You're a lost cause," Merle groans, "I can't even believe we're brothers sometimes. She wants you man and I ain't just talkin' about bumpin' uglies. Some chicks I swear, fall for the wounded hero type so easy."

"She's outta my league," he whispers, mostly to himself this time and Merle scoffs.

"Bullshit. Listen I'm only gonna say this once because it sounds awful fuckin' pussified, but if ya like the girl then make a go of it. You said it yourself, can't make it without people anymore."

There's no good bye, no fading exit because he wakes up with that feeling of falling, gasping awake and almost tumbling off the sofa that his legs are already too long for.

"Daryl?" Beth crawls over to him on her knees and he opens his eyes to hers blinking down at him, kind of worried and kind of amused. "Bad dream?"

He thinks over the question for a minute and catches his breath, remembers that he's the one asleep on the sofa and Merle's vest is still where he left it.

"M' alright," he assures, "just a weird one."

The room is still dark enough that he knows he hasn't been asleep as long he thought. Beth's settled back to sit on her feet and she's still watching him.

"Your turn," he stands up, stretches through his muscles and nods to the sofa, "rest up sleeping beauty."

She blushes a little at the term and takes the hand he offers to get off the ground. Shaman growls a little, just a warning in the back of his throat at their touch and she shushes him.

"Don't you growl at Daryl," she scolds, "he loves you too."

"Do not," he repeals to the dog sarcastically and then nudges her, "he's just protecting you, s' a good thing. You're his girl."

Her hand is still in his and he makes no move to let it go, some of Merle's words still sitting in his ears. She bites her lip, nervous to say something but as always, she's a lot braver than Daryl so she does anyway.

"You think you could lay with me? It's been real nice being in a house and all but I kinda miss how we were sleepin'…out there."

Out there where they were like one person with her thighs wrapped around one of his and her breath tickling his ear. He can almost hear Merle laughing at him and ok maybe the version of his brother that haunted his subconscious was right. Maybe Daryl wasn't the only one that it was about more than just keeping warm to.

Yesterday he probably would've shrugged her off, insisted he had to be more alert for watch but now he just nods, falls back on the sofa and makes room for her to climb down next to him.

"Hope your bodyguard is ok with this," he teases and they can both feel one small eye watching them from the rug on the floor. She giggles, half on top of him and burrows down into his neck. His hand is big between her sharp shoulder blades and as always he makes a mental note to make sure she eats more.

"Beth?"

"Hmm?" she's looking up at him from his shoulder but he speaks to the ceiling.

"I think they're alive."

She doesn't say anything for a long while, breathing against his neck but her hand kind of tightens where it's sitting over his heart, her fingers flexing open and shut.

"I do too."

"Tomorrow we're gonna start looking for them," he tells her and she doesn't argue, smiles against his throat.

The next morning they pack real packs for the first time in a while, with food and a change of clothes. They lock the house up tight; Beth leaves a thank you note in case the owners come back and it's just another thing he adds to the list of things only Beth Greene thinks to do. They promise they'll come back, can use it as their home base should anything go wrong or they come up empty handed. The house isn't going anywhere and both can track their way back to it now. She fashions a long leash for Shaman out of electrical cord because she doesn't want him wandering too far and they decide, on a whim, to follow the railroad tracks because she thinks it's what Carl might do, which is what Rick would do.

Beth sees the sign first, falls to her knees and he and the dog both panic. Shaman licks at her face frantically while Daryl runs his hands all over her, looking for some kind of wound he can't see. But then she's smiling through deep, air stealing sobs and she takes his chin. Beth turns his head until he's looking at the sign, looking at Maggie Greene's chicken scratch painted upon it in blood and he almost cries too.

For the first time Daryl wonders about those Angel wings he wears, that Merle wore first. He thanks his brother.


	6. Christmas Eve

**Christmas Eve**

Beth keeps calling it Christmas Eve. She's walking beside him with this bounce in her knees he's never seen before, her excitement like a drug, numbing any pain she has left in her ankle. With every new note, bloody scrawl from not just Maggie but Bob and Sasha, the light behind her eyes has grown. It's the way she used to stare down at Judith cuddled against her, as if she was holding the last proof that goodness had ever existed. Now Beth's been regarding everything with that wondrous hope, even him. She looks like the whole world has been reborn in the palm of her hands.

If Daryl's right, which he knows he is when it comes to things like this, they're only a half day's walk from Terminus; whatever Terminus is anyway. The place could be a hole in the ground for all he cares, if some of their people are there than that's where he and Beth need to be. By noon tomorrow the older Greene sister could be a stone's throw away.

"Doesn't it?" she pushes. Beth always pushes him, never lets him evade questions or mumble his way out of it like most people in his life have allowed him to get away with, "feel just like Christmas eve?"

"Dunno how that feels," he reminds her as they both duck their heads to cross under some lay lowing branches. Christmas didn't exist in the Dixon household, nothing even resembling it after they brought his ma's ashes in a cardboard box. Daryl imagines things were different across the county at the Greene farm; can picture twinkling lights and baby dolls and three shiny bicycles lined up in front of the tree, a ham baking in the oven while they praised the Savior's birth at church. That's how Christmas always looked in movies anyway. He can feel Beth's sigh beside him, doesn't have to look at her to know she's watching him while she calculates something to say. She nudges him though, jabbing her pointy elbow into his arm so he'll meet her gaze. He does of course, because he'd do just about anything she asked these days.

"This will be your first Christmas Even then, don't matter that it's not December, least I don't think it is."

They both know it's not, it's barely November yet. December will be colder than either one of them is ready for. He needs Terminus to be real.

"Yer crazy girl," he mutters simply and she smiles because she knows he means it in the most endearing way possible.

"What?" she gestures all around them with a wild grin, "not like there's a shortage of trees or anythin'."

She's all bundled up with her Carhart's hood up over her ears, wavy blonde tendrils spilling out of it and down her shoulders. Her last hairband snapped three days ago, and even though she keeps complaining that it's annoying and a safety hazard, Daryl likes the way it frames her face when she's humming across the fire. Shaman runs ahead a little bit, tugging Beth's shoulder forward where his makeshift leash is tied to her backpack. Daryl releases a low whistle and the canine halts, sits and looks back at them, waiting patiently.

"Looks like ya ain't the only one in a rush," he nudges her back.

"He's anxious to meet his Aunt Maggie," Beth says as if it's the most obvious thing and ignores the roll of his eyes. Then she falls back to what she was saying before.

"Christmas eve," she starts again, searching for words, "when you're a little kid anyway, it's like there's this thing you want more than nothin' in the whole world and you know you're gonna get it, even if daddy keeps remindin' you that if you get marks for talkin' at school then Santa won't come. It's just the waitin' makes you so crazy and excited and all tied up inside."

She laughs a little, goes somewhere else for just a second like she always does when her daddy comes into conversation. Like for one moment she blinks herself back to the farm and back to Herschel's side. He wishes he could go with her when she does. Then she opens her eyes and looks at him as if to say, g _et it?_

He does get it. He knows what it's like walking around with the ball of knots in your stomach, unable to concentrate on anything except the burning desire for something. He's been living like that for a couple weeks now, long before they found Maggie's note. And it's certainly not a bicycle he's been pining away for.

Daryl just shrugs though, makes some grunt in the back of his throat which Beth hates. Sometimes she's like a school teacher, forcing him to speak up and speak out. At just the right moment Daryl recognizes his own marker on a tree up ahead. He'd walked ahead a few hours ago, after forcing Beth to stop and rest at a tree stand they stumbled upon, still secured up in a tall oak. She was putting too much stress on that ankle, he was sure of it. If she didn't take it easy she would only make things worse and then they'd really be up the creek without a paddle.

"Snare," he points out, "gonna check em' then we should make camp, getting' dark."

"I'm gonna go fill our canteens," she points in the direction of the creek which they'd realized runs parallel to the direction of the train tracks.

He thinks about arguing, asking her to wait for him because it's getting dark and the distance between the snares and the creek is almost half a mile. It would fruitless though because if there's one thing Beth hates more than his mumbling, it's being made to feel incapable.

Instead he retrieves the gun he found a few weeks earlier, the one they've been lucky enough not to have fired yet. He presses it into Beth's hand and leaves everything else unspoken. She reaches over and unclasps the water bottle he has dangling from his belt by a carabiner. Daryl pretends that her hand fumbling on his waistband doesn't make his breath catch in his throat.

"See you in ten," she promises, holding up ten fingers for emphasis and turns her back to him, lets Shaman pull her forward towards the creek.

The snare is empty and he doesn't pay much attention because they've got enough food in their bags to make it another night, although it would have been nice to have some real live protein over their regular course. Watching Beth suck peanut butter from her fingers has become more and more distracting as the days progress. Life with Beth in general has had his mind going places it's never been before. She makes him approach situations in ways he never had, changes his thought process. She makes him laugh, something he's never been known for. He makes her laugh and the swell of pride he gets every time she smiles because of him is like none he's ever felt in his life. Now they touch, more than holding one another through the night. Sometimes while they walk she slides her hand into his, sometimes Daryl is the one to press his palm against hers. She cut his hair the night before; Beth sitting on a log with a pair of sewing sheers they found in a burned-out house and Daryl on the ground between her knees while she trimmed the bangs from his face and the hairs starting to creep down the back of his neck. With every new way for their bodies to brush he's become painfully aware of how his body reacts to her presence.

Daryl's a few steps away from his handmade trap when he stops. The realization hits him that the snare isn't just empty, it's been emptied by someone. At that very moment Shaman's barks echo through the woods and he feels a cold chill run through his body. The dog had proved him wrong in every sense of the word, barely ever made any noise, moved so quietly that Daryl had found himself stumbling over it in the dark more than once. Other than the low warning growl he had been prone to before getting used to Daryl's growing habit of placing his hand on Beth's lower back or tugging on her braid, Shaman never makes a sound. Now he's growling between barks, feral and protective.

He wants to go barreling through the woods but if they're dealing with humans, he knows he has to approach with caution. He can't hear a struggle; the stench of rotten flesh is absent from the air. He lowers to a crouch as he runs.

There are seven men, surrounding Beth in a half moon while the backs of her heels teeter on the edge of the creek bed.

"Cute thing like you shouldn't be playing with guns," one man insists in a voice laced with sick, sarcastic charm. He's older, gray haired and kind of heavy, dressed in leather. He's the leader, Daryl can tell by the way his men fan around him, watching him more than watching Beth. He has the only gun, the rest brandishing an array of hunting and kitchen knives. Well, the only gun besides the one Beth has cocked and trained on his head.

"You should be movin' on about now," Beth informs, almost politely if you didn't know her well enough. Daryl knows, knows that she's absolutely terrified but also absolutely willing to use the killing tool in her hands if she has to. He balances his bow on his shoulder and trains the arrow on the back of the man's head; he keeps nodding and moving though, exposing Beth each time, directly parallel to him.

"Darlin," the man draws, hand dancing around the butt of his own gun still tucked in his holster, "why don't you slide that thing over here to old Joe. You and your lil pup seem mighty lonely out here. Me and my men don't mean you any harm, we would have a swell time keeping a little thing like you safe."

The way he speaks makes Daryl's skin crawl and boil with rage, him and the rest of the men bluntly eyeing Beth up and down, the kind of predators that existed long before the population started dropping off. The kind that sickly seemed to thrive so well in the after, the kind who flourished in a world dotted with easy victims.

"What makes you think we're alone?" Beth tilts her head, almost smiles, emulating Rick Grimes for just a second and he remembers that she is far from an easy victim. Daryl can see the slight tremble in her upper lip, can read the sweat beads dotting her brow but only because he's come to know her like the back of his own hand. The men don't, seem to tilt off their calm axis, eyes darting into the woods and slouching their shoulders defensively. "If I were you I'd move on, before the others came back."

Shaman snarls at her feet, showing his teeth and the hairs on his neck standing straight up.

"Girl," the forced friendly demeanor of Old Joe is wearing with his patience, "I don't care who you got out there, doubtful it's even anyone, but they ain't here now. And you just been claimed."

He takes a quick, menacing step closer to her and it all happens in an instant. Shaman pounces, Daryl's arrow enters the man's throat and Beth's bullet explodes through his skull all at the same second. She stumbles backwards into the shallow bed of the creek, up to her waist in water but still holding the weapon in position. Most of the men run, scattering like cockroaches at the gunfire but one pounces at Beth. She fires again, the bullet landing square in his chest. Blood spatters across Beth's face and neck, dotting her like an abstract painting. One of the men fleeing runs right past Daryl as he bounds down towards the creek bed and he buries his knife between his eyes, uncaring if he's in retreat or not.

Shaman is whimpering, nudging at Beth's stiff hand with his nose. Daryl splashes into the water beside her, drenching his jeans as he kneels and cradles her to him, gently taking the gun from her locked hand, "Beth yer alright, yer ok. Ya did good, did perfect."

She's not crying, which is hardly a surprise. Beth's tears are reserved for the brief and fleeting moments of joy they've had in their travels, other than the quick moment in the country club where she'd allowed herself to break if just for a second in grief. He's cried more than her, usually in the dark in the beginning in the days after they'd fled. Before he had the comfort of her warmth while she slept and he couldn't build a damn in the tears that came for his family.

"Sweetheart," the word would've surprised him tumbling from his own mouth but he's too concerned with the distance in her blinking orbs, "we gotta move, all that noise is gone' be bringing them down on us any minute."

She doesn't really respond until he takes a palm of cool creek water and splashes it gently on her face, using his fingers to smear the dead man's blood from her cheeks and throat. She nods her head, what he said suddenly registering and lets him help her to her feet. Both of their jeans cling and weigh them down, shoes squishing beneath their feet.

Still silent Beth seems to fast-forward herself in an instant and catch up, grabbing her pack and slinging it back on, tying Shaman's leash to her shoulder strap. When he insists she take the gun back because there are more of the men scattered in the woods she's hesitant but tucks it in her waistband. Daryl briefly bends over the dead man, pulls the handgun from his holster and slides it into his jeans.

"They all ran on this side of the creek, we should cross it and keep moving for a while fore' we make camp. Keep the creek between us."

Beth doesn't argue with his plan and they both slosh back into the water with no hesitation because they're already drenched, the dog at their heels. Just as she'd bluffed to the men, any outsider wouldn't see the fragility in her eyes, navigating the woods beside him and keeping perfect pace.

After ten minutes of walking she finally speaks.

"I just killed two men."

They keep moving, Daryl glancing sideways at her. If it had been a new light in her eyes when she woke that morning, now there was a heavy cloud blocking it and he wants to hunt down every last cockroach out there hiding in the woods and put their leaders gun in their mouths.

"They were gonna kill you," he reminds, "after they did a lot worse to ya first and for who knows how long. Ya did exactly what you had to do," he knows it's blunt but also necessary. "You were brave as hell, they were monsters who shoulda' been picked off this Earth a long time ago."

He can see her milling over his words and they both freeze at the sound of dragging in the woods, Shaman crouching into a defensive stance before both of them.

"Walker," Beth sighs in relief when what was left of an elderly woman, already down to half an arm and dragging an almost disconnected leg, slugs out at them, trying to snap the remains of her jaw. Beth plants her knife in its skull almost tenderly and when the body falls he watches her half cradle it to keep the fall from being too hard.

She's staring down at the corpse, what had probably been someone's sweet granny before the infection took her, with hunched shoulders. She finally lifts her head to him and Daryl opens his arms for her to fall into.

"I'm sorry that happened, sorry I left you down there," he whispers as her lean arms encircle his waist, "ain't what I wanted for ya to ever have to do."

"Not your fault," she whispers against his chest and then steps back to look up at him.

"Daryl," she starts as if what she's about to say is poison on her tongue, "what if those men, what if they found the others before we did?"

He thinks of Maggie or Sasha alone with any of those predators and the thought makes his skin crawl. He shakes the thought away though.

"Ain't no way that group of walking shit stains could've taken out our people, couldn't take us."

"Cause I had a gun," she argues feebly, "what if Maggie, what if she…"

"Listen," he takes her chin, forces her blue eyes to meet his, "Maggie's strong, capable, tough as hell. Jus' like your pops. Jus' like you. We're gonna find her, soon if we keep moving."

Beth sighs against his hand which has on its own accord moved to cradle her cheek, stroking little circles on her skin.

"I'm just scared you were right," she whispers, "about no good things surviving."

"I'm an asshole," he argues, "that ain't possible."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Cause yer standing right here in front of me."

And suddenly he's trying to muster the courage to tell her all crazy ideas about him and her that have been blooming in his mind. At the CDC Jenner had shown them how the synapses in the brains of the infected burnt out and died, taking with them all the memories and feelings someone had ever known. For Daryl, everything was happening like one of Jenner's videos of his dead wife playing in reverse. Things were glowing to life in him that he never knew existed, more and more each day he spent by her side.

Her bottom lip kind of juts out and her eyes soften; a deep, calm breath works all the way through her shoulders. Daryl can feel her body relax, become pliable against him.

"Oh."

He doesn't do anything more than hold her face, make her watch him talk so she really hears him. If he's gonna say this, lay it all out there, he's gotta make sure she really understands. She's watching him with those saucers for eyes; his calloused, dirty hands on her porcelain, too thin face.

"I ain't got any answers on what we're gonna do, and what's gonna happen. Just think maybe, me and you, together… we can make somethin' worthwhile outta still being alive. Whether we find the others or not. Maybe we can build something."

Build something, that's how Glenn always put it.

"We are…" she starts and he interrupts. There's still time for him to back out, leave what he said non-committal, maybe nothing more than something Rick would've said to them all as a group, a declaration of loyalty. It's more than that though and she's gotta know.

"Ya make me different, make me somethin' I ain't ever been before. And it's fuckin' scary but I like it. Yer too good for me, trust me I know that, but I like ya… I like what we are together."

And then she gets it because she smiles at him, a wide one that's a mixture of scared and excited and looks like she has a real big idea, like before they burnt down the shack.

"You know what I mean?" he prods anyway and she nods, places one of her hands over his on her face.

"I know," she says in a way that tells him she's known for a while, has just been waiting for him to figure it out, "I like us too. We fit."

And then she inches up on her tippy toes and places a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Their lips are both chapped and it's quick and nervous but those electrical impulses inside him all buzz at once. The first brick in the foundation.

Daryl doesn't relax that night in camp, too cautious about the men he knows lay in wait where he can't see them. Beth lays her head in his lap though, Daryl's hand that isn't clutching a gun playing in her hair.

"Gonna find your sister tomorrow," he promises into the dark.

"Merry Christmas Daryl," she whispers at him before letting sleep take her away.


End file.
